The Central Bank of Kenya approved two separate mobile money ceilings, effective 15 August 2023. The daily transaction limit rose from Ksh 150,000 to a maximum of Ksh 250,000, and the wallet size, meaning the balance a wallet may hold, rose from Ksh 300,000 to a maximum of Ksh 500,000. Both reach payments terminated into a wallet from abroad.
A Kenyan mobile money wallet carries two ceilings, not one. There is the Bank's daily mobile money transaction limit, and a separate limit on how much the wallet may hold at all. Both are maximums the Central Bank of Kenya has approved, and the second is the one that surprises people.
Key Takeaways
- The daily mobile money transaction limit is a maximum of Ksh 250,000, raised from Ksh 150,000.
- The mobile money wallet size is a separate maximum of Ksh 500,000, raised from Ksh 300,000.
- Both figures took effect on 15 August 2023 and were announced by the Central Bank of Kenya on 8 September 2023.
- The Bank states the transaction limit applies to all transactions using mobile money rails, including those between payment service providers and banks.
- The figures are ceilings the Bank approved on providers' applications, so a provider may apply a lower one.
What the two ceilings are
They are set out in one press release, and they are not the same kind of limit.
The Central Bank of Kenya announced on 8 September 2023 that it had approved an increase in the limits for mobile money transactions and in the size of the mobile money wallet. Its own account of what it approved is that payment service providers offering mobile money wallets increased the daily mobile money transaction limit from Ksh 150,000 to a maximum of Ksh 250,000 and the size of the mobile money wallet from Ksh 300,000 to a maximum of Ksh 500,000. Both increases, the Bank records, took effect from 15 August 2023.
| Ceiling | What it governs | Previous | Approved maximum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily mobile money transaction limit | movement | Ksh 150,000 | Ksh 250,000 |
| Mobile money wallet size | the balance the wallet may hold | Ksh 300,000 | Ksh 500,000 |
The distinction between the two rows is the useful part. A transaction limit is about flow. A wallet size is about a stock, and it applies whether or not anything is moving. A wallet already holding a balance has less room under the wallet ceiling than the headline figure implies, because the ceiling is measured on the total rather than on the arriving amount.
Why an inbound payment is inside these rules rather than beside them
Because of a sentence the Bank added about scope.
It would be reasonable to read a mobile money limit as a domestic matter, governing one Kenyan phone paying another. The press release closes that reading. Its second numbered paragraph provides that the new transaction limit "will apply for all transactions that make use of mobile money rails and infrastructure, including transactions between PSPs, banks and other institutions that partner with mobile money providers", where PSP means payment service provider.
That description is written around infrastructure rather than around origin. A payment that reaches Kenya and is then terminated into a wallet is using those rails for its last leg, and the institution doing the terminating is of the kind the sentence names. The limit is not about where the money came from.
That matters because of what a licensed remittance operator may not do with the money. Kenya's Money Remittance Regulations bar such an operator from holding it. One of the places it can reach instead is a wallet, which carries both of these ceilings.
What happens to a transfer larger than the ceiling
The rules do not say a transfer is refused. They set two ceilings and stop there.
A wallet is capped at a balance of Ksh 500,000 at the approved maximum, and the transaction limit is Ksh 250,000 at the approved maximum. An arrival above the wallet figure cannot land in that wallet at all. One above the transaction figure cannot land as a single transaction. One alternative is a bank account. The Bank's scope sentence stops short of putting one outside the transaction ceiling, though, because it reaches transactions between providers, banks and other institutions partnered with mobile money providers. The transaction ceiling attaches to the mobile money rails, so a payment reaching an account across them is not outside that figure. The wallet ceiling attaches to a balance, so it binds only where there is a wallet.
What neither the press release nor the Money Remittance Regulations settle is what becomes of the payment itself. The release sets the ceilings and says nothing about a transaction that meets one. The Regulations bar the operator from holding the money but do not say where it goes instead. Whether it is held, returned, redirected to an account or paid another way is not fixed by either instrument.
Four things follow, and all four are properties of the ceiling rather than of any provider.
The binding number may be the wallet, not the transaction. A transfer inside the daily transaction limit can still be too large for a wallet that already holds a balance. The two ceilings are tested separately.
The release names the first ceiling a daily limit and does not say how a day is counted against it. The Bank calls it the daily mobile money transaction limit, which reads as a limit on a day rather than on one transaction. Its third numbered paragraph then speaks of the tariff applying to "transactions of up to Ksh. 250,000", which reads the other way. The release does not settle whether a day's other activity consumes the figure.
The published figures are maximums, not entitlements. The Bank's release describes the sequence plainly: it received and assessed applications from relevant payment service providers to increase the limits, conducted an internal review and then approved the new figures. What the Bank approves is a ceiling a provider may go up to. Where any particular account sits under that is a matter for the provider that holds it.
The pricing band did not move with the ceiling. The release provides that the respective current tariff for transactions of up to Ksh 150,000 will apply for transactions of up to Ksh 250,000. The old band was stretched over the new range rather than a new band being created above it.
Why the figures moved at all
The Bank published the reasoning as well as the numbers, and it is a history of limits being raised and later withdrawn.
Its release records that from 2020 it implemented, in consultation with payment service providers and other financial institutions, a range of measures to facilitate mobile money transactions during the pandemic period, and that those measures were gradually withdrawn between 2020 and 2022. It gives two earlier increases in the same paragraph: the limit for mobile money transactions from Ksh 70,000 to Ksh 150,000, and the daily limit for transactions and the wallet size from Ksh 150,000 to Ksh 300,000.
The release does not say which of those measures were withdrawn, or when. The two ceilings do start the 2023 change from different places, the daily limit from Ksh 150,000 and the wallet from Ksh 300,000, and the release states those figures without reconciling them against the pandemic ones. That gap is what stops the sequence being reconstructed, rather than what causes the difference. Anything more precise about the sequence would be a reconstruction rather than something the Bank has published.
It then gives the growth it says those measures produced, from March 2020 to June 2023: pay bills and till numbers up 43 per cent and 267 per cent; pay bill payments up 301 per cent by volume and 352 per cent by value; till number payments up 433 per cent and 166 per cent.
The release's fourth numbered paragraph sets a supervisory expectation beside the increase. Providers are to implement enhanced and appropriate risk mitigation measures, to identify, mitigate and report a named list of risks. The list runs to money laundering, financing of terrorism and proliferation finance; fraud, including digital and online scams; operational risk; and cybersecurity, with speedy resolution of customer complaints named alongside it. The release does not say the increase was conditional on it.
Two facts about the recipient decide which ceiling binds
Neither of them is about price, and neither is visible from Australia.
The first is whether the money is going to a mobile money wallet or to a bank account, because the two ceilings hang on different things. The wallet ceiling is a limit on a wallet balance, so it binds only where there is a wallet. The transaction ceiling follows the mobile money rails, so it can reach a payment into an account that crosses them. The second is what that wallet already holds, because the wallet ceiling is measured on the balance rather than on the arriving amount.
Both are properties of the recipient's account. The Central Bank of Kenya's mobile payments page carries the monthly statistics for the system these ceilings sit on, and the Australian dollar to Kenyan shilling corridor page carries the live reference figures for the pair.
Where to look next
- Recipient with no bank account: the registered hawala regime - the same last-leg question on a corridor where the payout is built around a collector rather than an account.
- Remittance - the glossary entry for the term the Kenyan rules are written around.
- Sending Australian dollars to Kenyan shillings - the corridor page, with the shilling's own note and the live reference figures for the pair.
- How international transfers work - the pillar guide on routes, checks and where transfers are held up.
- Converting Australian dollars to Kenyan shillings - the currency page, on Kenya's liberalised foreign exchange market and the indicative rates the Central Bank publishes.
Sources
- Central Bank of Kenya, press release, Increase in Mobile Money Transaction and Wallet Limits to Support Digitization of Payments, 8 September 2023 - the two approved ceilings and their previous values, the 15 August 2023 effective date, the scope sentence covering all transactions using mobile money rails including those between providers and banks, the unchanged tariff band, the 2020 to 2022 history, the growth figures from March 2020 to June 2023, and the risk mitigation expectation
- Central Bank of Kenya, Mobile Payments - the Bank's own page for the mobile money system and the monthly statistics it publishes on accounts, agents and transaction values
- Central Bank of Kenya, the Money Remittance Regulations 2013 - the licensed operator's permitted business, and the bar on deposit-taking, on maintaining current accounts for customers and on acting as custodian of funds
- Central Bank of Kenya, National Payments System - the Bank's index of the payment systems it operates and oversees and the regulations that govern them
General information about sending money to Kenya, and about limits the Central Bank of Kenya has approved for mobile money products. Not financial advice. The operative limit on any particular account is set by the institution that holds it. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.
Common questions
What are the Kenyan mobile money limits?
Two separate figures, both maximums approved by the Central Bank of Kenya. The daily mobile money transaction limit is a maximum of Ksh 250,000, raised from Ksh 150,000. The size of the mobile money wallet, meaning the balance it may hold, is a maximum of Ksh 500,000, raised from Ksh 300,000. Both took effect on 15 August 2023 and were announced by the Bank on 8 September 2023.
Do those limits apply to money arriving from overseas?
The Bank's wording is what settles it. Its press release states that the new transaction limit will apply for all transactions that make use of mobile money rails and infrastructure, including transactions between payment service providers, banks and other institutions that partner with mobile money providers. A payment from abroad that is terminated into a wallet is a transaction using those rails, so it is inside that description rather than outside it.
What is the difference between the transaction limit and the wallet size?
One is about movement and the other is about storage. The Bank calls the first the daily mobile money transaction limit. The wallet size governs how much the wallet may hold at any moment, whether or not anything is moving. A person whose wallet already holds a balance has less headroom under the wallet ceiling than the ceiling itself suggests, and that is the constraint senders most often miss.
Who sets these ceilings, the Central Bank or the provider?
Both have a part, and the order matters. The Central Bank of Kenya's press release records that it received and assessed applications from relevant payment service providers to raise the limits, reviewed them internally and then approved the new figures. The published numbers are maximums the Bank has approved rather than figures every provider must apply, so the operative limit on any particular account is the provider's, sitting at or below the approved ceiling.
Did the tariff change when the limits went up?
No, and the Bank said so explicitly. Its press release provides that the respective current tariff for transactions of up to Ksh 150,000 will apply for transactions of up to Ksh 250,000, and that this includes but is not limited to transactions between mobile money providers, other payment service providers, banks and other institutions that partner with mobile money providers. The ceiling moved and the pricing band underneath it was held where it was.